The Design It For Us campaign stemmed from this desire to include youth in the coalition and I’ve just found this work to be so invigorating. As young people, we can’t come to the solution by ourselves. And as the older generation, we can’t come to the solution by ourselves.

Safety parameters exist on everything that kids touch except social media. Social media was not designed for children, it was designed for adults. It’s now time you design it for us.

Another campaign led by youth advocates, the Design It For Us campaign, has been rallying around the bill’s passage for the past few months, taking out a full-page advertisement in the Los Angeles Times and sending a billboard-covered truck to legislators at a tech summit in Napa.

Maryland youth are calling on lawmakers to pass legislation that would protect their privacy online, but it may be a tough sell…Young people from across the state showed up Friday at the State House to turn up the heat on legislators to pass the bills.

“To us, that means having control of what happens online,” George Washington University student Arielle Geismar said. “Currently, large tech companies are using our data. They’re tracking young people. And, they’re using the materials we have and what we do on social media for their own profit.”

Design it For Us, a coalition of youth activists pushing for changes to platform regulation, lamented that the perspectives of internet natives were not reflected in the bill.

Recently passed laws in Utah and Arkansas laws aren’t about tech accountability or children’s safety, write Emma Lembke and Zamaan Qureshi, both age 20.

In response to the bill, Design it For Us, a youth coalition pushing for changes to social media in the face of mental health concerns, said lawmakers should focus on shaping the basic product design of social media platforms, rather than imposing after-the-fact usage limitations.

“We believe that any legislation addressing harm on social media should put the onus on companies to make their platforms safer, instead of preventing kids and teens from being on platforms at all,” said Co-Chair Zamaan Qureshi.

A couple of outside groups, like the youth-led coalition Design It For Us, said a bill focused on age identification and parental control “misses the mark” and should instead focus on “age appropriate design code” to keep children safe online.

Youth-led coalition Design it For Us released a statement saying in part, “We believe that any legislation addressing harm on social media should put the onus on companies to make their platforms safer, instead of preventing kids and teens from being on platforms at all.”

One youth-led coalition that’s been involved in the kids’ online safety debate, Design It For Us, said the mandatory age verification bill from Schatz and others “misses the mark.”